By This and This Only
by polar-realm
Summary: One winter's night, D seeks shelter and comfort from an old friend. Doris/D. Rated for language, sexual content.


Content note: contains ridiculous, ridiculous vampire angst, some cursing, and also a (not _terribly_-explicit, but potentially quite terrible) sex scene near the end. Thou hast been warned.

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><p>Doris had thought once, watching the hunter D ride off along the dusty road from her doorstep and never once look back, that it was simply his way to go and not return, and that she ought not to let it trouble her too greatly. She'd been wrong then - not the first time she's misjudged, doubtful the last, but she's seldom been so glad of it. It's not his way to stay, but he passes through on occasion, always on the way to somewhere else. Sometimes he even stops, though never for long - in search of news, he says, or supplies from one he knows will sell to such as him. But the way his mouth quirks up at the corners into something approaching a smile, the way the hard lines of his face soften infinitesimally as he steps across her threshold, tell a different story.<p>

This time, she sees him long before he arrives, the dark shape of a rider winding his way up the narrow road to her home, cloaked in night and snow. She meets him at the door with the storm blowing wild outside, tearing at branches and sending snowflakes reeling in hypnotic fluries, the kind of cold that cuts through skin and muscle to settle deep inside the bones. He bows his head briefly in greeting, frost silvering the broad brim of his hat, and waits implacable until she steps aside and asks him in.

She has wondered, sometimes, if he can go where he has not been invited.

Only wondered - some questions, it is impolite to ask, and the Frontier that she knows is built on that kind of wordless accord. And he is too courteous, in any case, to do otherwise. Too wary of his father's legacy, and that is explanation enough for her. She ushers him into the warmth of the kitchen, a seat at the table, a mug of hot tea that he does not drink but wraps his hands around, breathing in the rising steam. Her whip is coiled at her hip, her gun nestled in its holster at her belt, but that much is habit, now, more than caution. It has been a long time since she felt the need for weapons in his presence.

Years, in fact. It's a little startling to think of that, how easily time can pass when you aren't thinking to track it. It's been years. Almost five of them, running river-deep and river-swift, carrying her along and leaving him stranded. Doris takes another look, registers details she hadn't picked up on before, snowflakes melting in his hair and the careful deliberation of his movements as he draws his gloves off and hangs his hat on the chair behind him. He looks - beyond weary, this time, threadbare and roadworn, face drawn tight with exhaustion and, yes, maybe hunger.

_You need anything,_ she wants to ask, and doesn't. _Is there anything I can do?_ She already knows what his answer would be, and that it would be a lie, and if she ever forces the truth out of him, she suspects it would be the last time they speak at all.

"Bad hunt?" she asks instead, settling in beside him and pouring a mug of tea for herself. Chamomile with honey, smooth and sweet. It's always been her favorite. He doesn't speak immediately - never does - and she doesn't press him, worried though she is, eager though she is for an accounting of all that's gone by.

"I lost the bounty," he says at last.

"The quarry got away?" It's worth knowing - she doesn't like the thought of a Noble with a killing grudge on the trail of a hunter who likes to pretend he's invincible. But D shakes his head, once.

"Dead," he says, and she nods, understanding. He had killed his mark and lost the bounty, and that meant the one he'd been charged to rescue was dead as well. She's been through a few jobs like that herself, and the memory always leaves a bitter taste.

"I'm sorry," she says. It isn't a condolence she'd ever expected to offer him. Most hunters require payment for recovery dead or alive, and she can't imagine his protocol is any different, not usually. But then, most hunters don't take charity cases, and when payment is offered, they collect.

And that, Doris thinks, that too is worth remembering. Her hands tighten briefly around her mug of tea, and a shiver courses down her spine as muscles tense, fight-or-flight and the shadow of an instinctive dread she isn't sure she'll ever fully shake. She ought to be over it by now. Ought to be. But there is something ravenous about this season, an emptiness that howls in the wind outside her door and sets all the old ghosts to hunting, and the walls of her house are suddenly very, very thin.

Doris stands - too abruptly - and goes to stoke the fire, adds another log to the blaze and smiles as it takes to burning. She keeps her breathing steady, low, and stills the impulse to touch the faded scars on her throat, the place where the old Noble bastard had taken blood. All that had been a long time ago, and it's gone and done with. A hunter can't let that kind of thing affect her, not if she wants to stay a hunter for long. And besides -

And besides. D is watching her from across the room, and she wonders if he can read the direction of her thoughts, or feel the weight of a debt uncollected. His eyes are dark wells in a bone-pale face, his mouth a thin, hard line, and the warmth might be doing him good but she knows damn well it ain't tea he's needing. But he says nothing, just shifts his eyes to the flames when he sees her notice, tracking the light-trails of sparks rising into the chimney. Funny thing, the way that light and heat always feel so much like safety. Takes a right fool, she supposes, to invite the wolf to lie down by the campfire and think that makes him not a wolf anymore.

She wonders if it ought to bother her more than it does. It used to, sure. He is what he is, and she knows what that means, and why it matters. But he's no more a monster than anyone else she's known, and less than some, and he's sitting there in _her_ kitchen, she let him step across her threshold and into her home, and that means something too. And friendship, old debts, those mean something more. And she doesn't know where the decision comes from, exactly, whether it's wise or stupid or just the only thing she knows how to do right now, but she sets the poker down by the fireside and crosses back to where he sits, and when she hesitates, it's only for a second.

"D," she says, laying a hand on the back of his chair. "Are you alright?"

"Fine." Rough voice, low and rasping. He doesn't move.

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't look it. Last time I was that fine, I was laid up in the infirmary for a week while a machine knit my bones back together." It had been a lesser dragon, that time – nasty sonofabitch, all things considered, but the bounty had been enough to fix the perimeter fence and buy a new generator besides. And that's what matters, isn't it? Finishing the job, no matter how much damage it takes to get there. Doris is good with long odds and risky bets, and she ain't half convinced this isn't one of them now, but damned if she's going to back down.

"I need - time," he says. "I need time."

"No. You don't."

She draws a pin from her hair, twists until she hears a click and the thin blade slips free of its casing. A hunter's tool, meant for concealment. The sharp edge of it gleams in the lamplight, and she sees his eyes widen as he guesses what she intends.

The cut is quick and almost painless. Blood wells up crimson against her skin, runs in a thin trickle down the inside of her arm. It might be illusion, but she doesn't think she has ever seen anyone looking so gaunt, so harrowed.

"I am asking you to let this be," he says, and his voice grates in the still air. It _is_ hunger in his face, this time. There is no mistaking it.

"I've a debt to pay, dhampir, and I'm tired of it hanging over my head," she says, not quite as calmly as she'd intended, and he makes a sound low in his throat that might have been a laugh or a growl or maybe both, stands and steps backwards with predatory grace and eyes averted. And then she's saying "no, listen, it's alright," and other such useless assurances, until he takes her shoulders in his cool, steady hands and says, "are you certain?"

And she says - "yes."

After that, his hands aren't steady anymore. They shake as he grips her shoulders tightly, sharp fingernails not quite piercing fabric or skin, as he holds on and as he lets go. He considers her for a moment, pupils narrowed to a pinpoint focus more suited to some winged and taloned hunter. And then he says "thank you." And then he turns abruptly and stalks from the room, moving like he's got Hell chasing at his heels. She isn't quick enough to catch him, and she isn't fool enough to follow.

When he returns, it's with a roll of gauze bandages and medical tape. His eyes are dull red in the half-light as he binds her arm, but he's composed again, retreating behind his customary stillness. She doesn't look away, and this time, neither does he.

"It was a dhampir," he says as he ties the final knot on the bandage, that same soft monotone she's grown so used to. "The one I killed this time. Do you understand?"

"Yeah," she says, her mouth dry. Wonders if she does. And she doesn't know if it's distance or closeness he's craving now, or some impossible highwire balance between the two, but she knows what she wants and maybe even what he needs, and it isn't - not only - what she'd thought before.

He came here for a reason, yeah. Always does. He's wanting - warmth, life, trust. A place by the campfire, out of the winter dark. She doesn't know. But when she bends closer, runs her fingers through long dark hair, he's the one who goes still beneath her touch, and he's the one who doesn't pull away. Not until her hands find the buckles on his armor, and he catches her wrists and holds her back, his eyes glinting.

"You've tried to pay me twice, hunter, and both times I've declined. By this point, any law I've encountered would tell you my claim is forfeit."

"This ain't a debt," she whispers roughly. "It never was. Not once I knew the truth of you."

And then she kisses him - carefully, yes, slow at first and almost chaste, until his hands tighten around her wrists and she feels the shudder that runs through him, hears the ragged edge in his breathing and feels him pressed hard against her thigh. His mouth closes over hers, urgent and hesitant, clumsy enough that she thinks that for his uncountable years, he's maybe never done this before.

Doris draws him to his feet and away from the kitchen, leads him toward the hearth and the radiant warmth. Reaches up to unbind her hair and shake it loose about her shoulders, unlace her loose shirt and let it drop behind her, cool air prickling her bare skin. She loosens her belt and eases her trousers down over her hips, kicks them ungracefully free while he stares like a starving man presented with a feast, which is maybe not the best metaphor and which nevertheless sends a sudden, powerful thrill of heat coursing through her. He's a black shape in armor, adorned by winter, a careful and silent man, and she can't say for certain which image compels her more, or which is closer to truth.

He sinks to his knees before her like a knight errant, kisses the place where the bandage wraps tight around her arm, and then in a trail upward towards her collarbone, raising shivers where his mouth had been. It's clear enough what he's proving - to himself, to her - but her breath catches in her throat, sharp desire and the awareness of threat mingling in the pit of her stomach until she can't separate one from the other. She catches sight of something intent and predatory in his features as he traces one black-gloved hand down the muscled curve of her stomach, enough to make her wonder if freezing beneath the hawk's shadow ever really helped any fieldmice at all. And this might have frightened her once, or the girl she had been, caught beneath the arc of Count Lee's wings. It doesn't frighten her now.

Then she's pushing him down and he's pulling her with him, all wiry strength and hunger, eyes half-closed and head thrown back - and she's enough of a predator herself to know exactly what an exposed throat means, and the fact that he lets her pin him without a fight and find the clasps on his leathers, pull away that armor piece by intricate piece. His face is luminous and strange in the half-darkness, his skin untouched by age or injury, and it's that, more than anything else, that marks him as something not and never-has-been human. Her own body is a map of old damage, crisscrossed by scars. It's a hunter's due, and no surprise to her when he touches those scars with something like fascination, traces the deep claw marks that run down from her ribcage to the base of her spine, almost gentle in the remnants of his restraint. And she's straddling his hips and dragging her fingernails hard down his chest until he arches beneath her, hisses through sharp teeth as she sinks down and takes him inside her.

He isn't gentle, but neither is she, not by nature or inclination, and she's been wanting this since almost the day she saw him - his hands on her hips, his teeth at her throat, the rhythm fast and hard and almost brutal. He licks the salt from the hollow of her shoulder, pinprick points of fangs just brushing her skin, and warmth sparks low and curls outward along the length of her spine. She reads caged violence in the hollows of his face and the darkness of his eyes, sees him still clinging to the thin sharp edge of everything he is, but there is more than violence there, and it's enough - as she pushes down against him, muscles clenching, breath coming in harsh, jagged gasps - to shatter the last of her own control and send her past the edge of reason, out into the silent place beyond.

And when clarity returns she's lying curled against him, sweat-slick and breathing hard, with her hair falling loose and tangled across her face. The fire has burned down low, more heat than light now, and it's oddly unnerving to realize that most of the warmth between them is hers. But he's holding her loosely, her head on his chest and their legs tangled together, and she doesn't think she's been so comfortable in a long time.

"You are - very trusting," he whispers raggedly, the ghost of his breath stirring along her skin. It sounds like an admission of something, though she's damned if she can guess what. His eyes are closed still, and she's certain that if he were to open them she'd be seeing blood-crimson, burning against the startling pallor of his face. Hunger hasn't lost its hold on him yet. But hunger isn't what matters most, and both of them know it.

"You're wrong there, I think," she says. "I don't trust lightly, but I do trust well."

He says nothing. She hadn't really thought he would. But she sees the almost-smile that flickers across his face, there and gone like lightning, and she runs a hand down his chest, lightly, to settle against the place where his heart beats strong and constant beneath his skin. She can still hear the storm, the wind screaming down across the open plains and piling snowdrifts against her doorstep, and the road is still out there, calling its orphans back home. D will be gone tomorrow, she knows, and it will be some time before he finds his way back again. And she'll be gone with the first thaw, most like, chasing what jobs the year has to offer. But for now, there's warmth and maybe even safety, and the dim glow of a fire that needs rekindling, and they are neither of them alone. This year's winter will be a long time ending, but she ain't worried. That cold can't touch them here.


End file.
